RICHMOND, VA.- The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts announced today that Siera Hyte (Cherokee Nation) has been appointed as the museum’s inaugural Schiller Family Curator of Indigenous American Art. Hyte will begin working at VMFA on August 26, 2024.

“We are delighted to welcome Siera to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, where she will be an incredible addition to our curatorial team,” said Director and CEO Alex Nyerges. “Siera will advance our commitment to Indigenous American art through important acquisitions, community engagement, exhibitions, publications, public programs and research.”

Hyte will be charged with the development, interpretation and stewardship of VMFA’s Indigenous American art collection, which comprises nearly 1,000 works of art in a variety of media, including beadwork, ceramics, paintings, photographs, sculpture and textiles. She will also play a key role in the reinstallation of Indigenous American art in the James W. and Frances G. McGlothlin Wing II, as part of the museum’s upcoming expansion and renovation project. Other duties include working with VMFA staff members and stakeholders on the museum’s annual Pocahontas Reframed film festival, as well as ensuring the museum’s continued compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA.

“Siera Hyte’s appointment as VMFA’s Schiller Family Curator of Indigenous American Art is both culturally relevant and timely,” said VMFA’s Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Art and Education Dr. Michael Taylor. “She is a dynamic curator whose commitment to new narratives and meaningful partnerships will strengthen our relationships with Indigenous artists and communities.”

VMFA has a longstanding commitment to Virginia’s Indigenous American communities. With guidance and support from Lynette Allston, chief of the Nottoway Indian Tribe of Virginia and president of the museum’s Board of Trustees, VMFA recently unveiled signage in the building and on our website acknowledging the presence of indigenous peoples on the land where the museum stands. The Commonwealth of Virginia was one of the first points of contact between Indigenous peoples and European settlers. Today, Virginia is home to seven federally recognized tribes: Chickahominy Indian Tribe, Chickahominy Indian Tribe - Eastern Division, Monacan Indian Nation, Nansemond Indian Tribe, Pamunkey Indian Tribe, Rappahannock Tribe and Upper Mattaponi Indian Tribe. In addition to these federally recognized tribes, the Commonwealth of Virginia also recognizes the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe, Mattaponi Indian Tribe, Nottoway Indian Tribe of Virginia and the Patawomeck Indian Tribe of Virginia.

“My curatorial approach foregrounds community-centered and community-led scholarship. This role is an incredible opportunity to collaborate with Indigenous artists, community members and my new VMFA colleagues to re-present and grow the collection that the museum stewards, and to tell expansive stories that center Indigenous survivance and the profound creative traditions practiced by Indigenous artists,” said Hyte. “I was drawn to this position because of VMFA’s strong collection and its track record of exhibitions and programs that reframe and expand how we understand American art and American history.”

A curator, writer and artist, Hyte holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at Austin. Her curatorial, programmatic and educational experiences have focused on 20th- and 21st-century Indigenous American artists, and she has a strong interest in pre-20th-century artwork. Throughout her career, she has worked to reconcile American legacies of colonialism and dispossession with the vibrancy of Indigenous art histories, cultural traditions and artistic futurities.

Hyte comes to VMFA from the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine, where she served as manager of programs and fellowships at the school’s Lunder Institute for American Art. While there, Hyte organized the transhistorical exhibition Painted: Our Bodies, Hearts, and Village, which examined how Pueblo artists and other Indigenous perspectives shaped the cultural landscape of Taos, New Mexico, and influenced an active group of Anglo-American painters called the Taos Society of Artists, from 1915 to 1927. In keeping with Hyte’s commitment to collaboration and foregrounding Indigenous voices, expertise and lived experiences, the exhibition’s installation and interpretation were informed by a curatorial advisory council made up of Pueblo and Wabanaki artists and stakeholders. The exhibition’s designer, Virgil Ortiz, is a Cochiti Pueblo artist whose work is in VMFA’s collection.

Collaborating with colleagues across Colby College Museum of Art, Hyte also led efforts to develop fellowships for Wabanaki artists and culture bearers to incorporate multiple perspectives in permanent collection exhibitions, special exhibitions, public programs and educational offerings for students in kindergarten through 12th grade.

Prior to working at the Lunder Institute for American Art, Hyte was the assistant curator of modern and contemporary art at Colby College Museum, where she also participated in a nine-month curatorial fellowship. Additional relevant experiences include her previous roles as a lecturer and teaching assistant at the University of Texas at Austin, as a public elementary school art teacher in San Diego, California, and as a museum educator at the Missoula Art Museum in Montana.